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Last year on November 29th, I wrote this post sharing the beginning of my journey to writing down one thousand gifts from God. Tonight, I am going to be posting my finished list of one thousand gifts. I have done a lot of thinking about the process as I have come down to these last few days. I certainly didn't know last year what this year would hold, but as I have worked at the discipline (sometimes more successfully than others) of naming the many many graces that come my way every single day, I can see clearly how God has used this in my life to constantly remind me to look to Him, the giver of all good gifts. I will definitely keep recording my gifts, but don't know that I will always list them all out on my blog, partly because I know that there will be times that I want to be more specific, but can't necessarily on a public blog. I want to keep posting some though, because it is always an encouragement to me to read others' lists and I hope in some way that r…

We (well, the boys and I) spent the last week at my parents house in Illinois and apart from the fact that Micah didn't get to be with us, it may have been my favorite week this year. Seriously, time with my family is so precious and we had the absolute best time. I am so close to reaching my goal of writing one thousand gifts and have been trying to be extra vigilant to record those moments. That coupled with the fact that it has been a couple of weeks since I posted means that this is a pretty long list, so here we go:

898.A day without shoulder pain for the first time in several days 899.For having a husband who can adjust my back and help me be pain free
(see above!) 900.My surgeon and her care for her patients 901.That I call her my friend 902.Homemade spaghetti sauce 903.Little boys learning to read 904.Headband to keep my ears warm on a cold morning 905.A smiling Heidi 906.Sharing the ‘practice’ of trusting with others whose loved one is ill 907.Recapping things learned in Bible S…

The boys and I are heading out of town tomorrow for an entire week at my parents' house. I am so excited! It has been close to two years (I think) since we have been there and I am feeling way overdue for a visit to their house. We normally spend Thanksgiving here with Micah's family, but because of Micah's schedule this year, I knew that we would most likely not be able to travel at Christmas and since the boys get out of school for an entire week, I decided that I would pack us up and go and spend it with my parents. We have a LOT of family that will be joining us for Thanksgiving and I am so looking forward to seeing my grandparents, some aunts and uncles, and even cousins.

After getting back into town last week and trying to reclaim my house, I have to admit that I was kind of dreading the whole getting ready to leave again. But.....yesterday turned out to be awesome. Micah was going to be working a noon to midnight shift and so when I got home from dropping the …

When the boys got in the car this afternoon, they were very insistent on the fact that after their Thanksgiving Feast on Friday, they were going to nine weeks off of school. An email from their teacher this evening informing parents that we will be off for nine days and to please remember to work on the letters and sounds that they have been diligently learning.

We were eating lunch one day and I had given them a pear for 'dessert' and Xavier was asking why we were eating pears and William pipes in with "because they're the yummiest part of meal, that's why!"

I am not sure why we were talking about this tonight at bedtime--I am sure they were doing everything in their power to prolong the actual going to bed process. But, they were asking about babies and sleeping and I told them that when they were babies, they would wake me up through the night to eat/have a bottle and Xavier comes out with, 'so, we were nocturnal when we were babies?' Well, I g…

I have not been very faithful with recording these the last couple of weeks. But, I am getting tantalizingly close to reaching my goal of recording a thousand gifts and am determined to spend time each day recording the many graces/gifts that I receive each day.

867.help from neighbors when I awoke to the van’s battery being dead 868.planning surprises 869.extra time together as a family on the trip to Grandpa King’s funeral 870.hearing testimony at the service of how his burden lifted when he
accepted Christ 871.beautiful fall colors as we drove through Missouri 872.carving pumpkins, making memories together 873.getting to the airport, making it to gates, anticipating a fun filled
day 874.sweet visits and time with Dana, Lynette, and Kari 875.surprising Melissa 876.going on a photo shoot with Melissa 877.a birthday celebrated with my sisters 878.his mercies are new every
morning, great is His faithfulness

Digital Scrapbooking Day was on Saturday November 5, while I was at Melissa's house. I was so excited when I realized that I was going to be at her house because as I told Micah, "it is our holiday!" We didn't get as much scrapping done on that day as we wanted to, but we still managed to get a few pages done while I was there.

So, last Friday was a very long day. As in, a very long day. I woke up at 4:15 (i.e. the middle of the night) and realized that it was going to be about 19 hours before I actually made it to where I was headed--surprising Melissa.

A little background: I am always up for a trip to Nashville, but a few weeks ago I got it in my head that I wanted to surprise my sister for her birthday like she had surprised me four years ago. I thought about telling her about my upcoming visit so that we could both anticipate it, but ended up deciding that the fun of the surprise was going to be better. So, I spent the week before I left trying to get things done around the house and also to not slip up and say something to Melissa about seeing her that weekend.

It turned out that I had an early morning flight, but couldn't surprise Melissa until late that evening because they had tickets to see the musical Wicked at the performing arts center. My sweet friend Dana picked me up at the airport a…

I made a surprise trip to Nashville last Friday to visit with my sisters. I plan a more in depth blog post at some point, but if you want to see a video and a picture or two, you can head to my sister's blog.

Today, I have to make a choice to be responsible and actually work on reclaiming my house that was somehow destroyed while I was away. Maybe it was the earthquakes.....

And also, the choice to catch up on paperwork from the job that actually pays the bills. Working for my father in law is a huge blessing, allowing me the freedom of being gone and working from home. So, today, I think I had better make a good choice and get some work done.

I wanted to share a link with you though to a facebook event created by a friend of our family (I hope that the link will take you there). He explains his reasons on the page, but he has organized a day of prayer for Melissa tomorrow 11/11/11.

Would you consider joining together with us as we ask the God who made heaven and earth to hea…

We spent the weekend out of town attending the visitation and funeral for Micah's grandfather who passed away early last week. While it is always sad to face death, we have been expecting this for some time and we are thankful that he did not suffer long and, most importantly, we know that he is now in the presence of the Father complete and fully healed. The weekend gave us some extra time together as a family traveling and then we were able to see and spend good time together with some extended family that we haven't seen for quite some time.

We made it home late Saturday night and Micah had to be at work bright and early Sunday morning at 6 AM. The boys and I went to church and basically crashed all afternoon before heading out to our church's Trunk or Treat event (that I took pictures of, but have yet to upload to the computer). The boys have been so funny this year about Halloween--way more excited than in year's past. They got up from their nap on Sunday a…